Neo-Neorealismus

Kaum ein Film wurde von der Kritik in den USA so stark beachtet wie „Wendy and Lucy“ von Kelly Reichardt, ein herzzerreißender Film über eine heimatlose Frau, die ihren Hund verliert (Manhola Dargis: „“With uninflected realism, an attentive camera and no weeping strings, Ms. Reichardt makes palpably, tragically real what it means to be struggling at the very edge of the economic abyss. WENDY AND LUCY is political to the bone but without any of the usual grandstanding.”) – ab 5. Mai auf DVD.

„But what if, at least some of the time, we feel an urge to escape from escapism? For most of the past decade, magical thinking has been elevated from a diversion to an ideological principle. The benign faith that dreams will come true can be hard to distinguish from the more sinister seduction of believing in lies. To counter the tyranny of fantasy entrenched on Wall Street and in Washington as well as in Hollywood, it seems possible that engagement with the world as it is might reassert itself as an aesthetic strategy. Perhaps it would be worth considering that what we need from movies, in the face of a dismaying and confusing real world, is realism.“ (A.O. Scott: Neo-Neo Realism. In: New York Times, 22.3.2009)